Columns

MARK PICKUP

One of the great problems I have faced in my Christian walk is that of grasping the enormity of God's love. Quite simply, I can not internalize or understand the immense love behind the cross. For Christ to willingly suffer and die to save someone such as me is too much for my puny mind to comprehend. I must simply accept that it is true. It is a mystery that confounds me.

Easter breaks my heart. How can I possibly repay Christ for what he has done for me? It is impossible. All I can do in response by surrendering to Christ's perfect love is to try to love him in return.

GORDON SELF

In this column I raise everyday ethical issues. Occasionally, unique ethical quandaries trigger reflection as in last month's column around boundary setting without judging or abandoning people living with addictions.

But certainly all of us can relate to managing another moral boundary — accepting gifts that come with strings attached. In this case, how do we ensure gift-giving practices do not cause us to abandon our own integrity?

FR. RAYMOND DE SOUZA

Why does Pope Benedict bother to write books? Long before his election to the See of Peter he was established as a leading theologian of his generation. Being universal pastor of the Church is a crushing job, so why add to it by embarking on a massive scholarly project?

Evidently the pope enjoys writing theology. The deeper reason though is that Benedict knows, with all humility, that he is better at it than anyone else. Just as the soon-to-be-Blessed John Paul II knew that he had a special gift for leading massive, history-changing public manifestations of the faith, Benedict likely concludes that if the Lord wanted him as pope then he should do what God gave him the talent to do.

Often, I am asked whether I believe in evolution or whether evolution is a fact. These are complicated questions, but most who ask them expect a clear and simple answer. So I have learned to simply say "yes, evolution is a fact."

However, I quite disagree with those who think that evolution is the answer to all there is to ask about life. Evolution is a theory of something, but not everything.

At the birth of my first child, I experienced in a personal way the fulfillment of God's promises. I remember how close I felt to the Lord during my pregnancy, despite the physical difficulties of childbearing.

Very early on Christmas morning, I travelled to hospital and laboured through the dark hours to deliver my daughter. In the gift of Hannah's birth, I came to a deeper understanding of the events of the Nativity, when God's promise of salvation is fulfilled in one tiny, human baby.

In the Foreword to the new volume of his book Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger says he wants to lead his readers to both a personal encounter with Jesus and to "sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus." The two goals are compatible, a fact that Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) has long striven to articulate and defend. It is possible to both know and love Jesus.

FR. RON ROLHEISER, omi

We are saved by the death of Jesus. All Christians believe this. This is a central tenet within the Christian faith and the centre of almost all Christian iconography. Jesus' death on a cross changed history forever. Indeed, we measure time by it. The effect of his death so marked the world that, not long after he died, the world began to measure time by him. We are in the year 2011 since Jesus was born.

MARK PICKUP

Do old men have dreams?" asked Jeanette as she watched her 88-year-old father through the window of the cottage they rented for a week in the Rockies.

Bill Richards was standing alone on the deck looking at the natural majesty around him. It was dusk. The last vestiges of daylight were slipping behind a snow-capped mountain in the distance. It was the end of another day of more than 32,000 previous days that had passed in Bill's long life. There was something sad yet symbolic in the scene.